SMU’s website, which was completely redesigned and relaunched in September 2012, recently won the prestigious Acquia Partner Site of the Year award against an international field of competitors.

A total of 114 sites were nominated in eight categories in the competition. SMU’s team from the Integrated Information Technology Services (IITS), Office of Corporate Communications and Marketing (OCCM) and technical partner PixelOnion competed in the Higher Education category which included entries from Europe and the USA. SMU along with Stanford Graduate School of Business and Norwich Online were the finalists.

The criteria for judging were functionality, integration, visual design, use of content, community, multimedia and overall experience.

SMU was announced as the eventual winner in a final dinner on 24 May 2013 at the DrupalCon event in Portland, Ohio, USA.

Mr Lau Kai Cheong, SMU Chief Information Officer and Vice President, IITS remarked, “This award is testimony to what is truly teamwork and co-operation amongst many people – OCCM, school representatives, department representatives and IITS.  IITS could not have done this alone. Redesigning and revamping a whole corporate web site is no trivial task due to the large number of stakeholders involved and indeed the teams have spent many many hours on this. And improvements are still ongoing. This award is a welcome boost to the teams for all their hard work.”

[Featured photos: Members of SMU’s award-winning website development team: Wilson Nger (Manager, IITS), Karl Mendoza (Web Designer, IITS), Theingi Zaw (Web Application Developer, IITS), Mervyn Chen (Manager, Corporate Marketing, OCCM), Arkar Winn Minn Htwe (Web Application Developer, IITS), Lau Kai Cheong (Chief Information Officer and Vice President, IITS), and Goh Wee Sen (Associate Director, Web and Media Technologies, IITS), and SMU’s award winning responsive website.]